


Bleak Midwinter

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Category: Norse Mythology - Fandom, Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:00:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Our armies drove the Frost Giants back into the heart of their own world. The cost was great. In the end, their king fell… and the source of their power was taken from them."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>What if the source of the Jotuns' power wasn't the casket Odin stole? It was Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleak Midwinter

Everything was over the moment he touched the casket.

“Am I cursed?”

“Perhaps,” growled a voice that wasn’t his father’s, “but I am blessed.”

A hand closed around his neck, collaring him with ice. The air in his throat froze, and he choked as he was lifted clear off the ground, level with Odin where he stood on the staircase.

His father didn’t move to help him. He didn’t even look surprised.

“He’s mine, Allfather.” That voice, soft with the leashed power of an avalanche. Loki knew that voice.

_You don't know what your actions would bring about... I do._

Laufey.

“What am I?” He already knew, but he dared to hope he was wrong.

Odin would not meet his eyes. The grip on Loki’s neck shifted, the ice breaking, until he was facing the jötunn that held him. Laufey’s red gaze bore into him, utterly triumphant.

“You are my son.”

Odin did not argue. Loki’s words failed him.

+

Loki learned quickly enough that the casket was nothing more than a decoration, a bauble for the altar in the citadel. The first time Laufey drew on the power source he’d taken back from Odin, the cold scorched Loki black as quickly as any warm blooded Asgardian. He snapped the tips of two fingers clean off before they thawed. They were quickly reattached- a simple task with so much power at Laufey’s disposal- but the pain was such that Loki almost wished he hadn’t bothered. The clean lines of the scars fascinated him for all the wrong reasons.

Had Odin known?

How could he not.

_No more than another stolen relic..._

Laufey didn’t need to put him in chains: the ice trapped him better than iron ever could. The absolute cold seared through him every time the power was accessed. His skin blistered black again when Laufey raised the citadel from its shattered ruins. It had healed where it could be seen. The palace was worse: his bones froze as the walls were raised and leeched the warmth from him til his heart stopped. He shattered his knees when he fell and the pain was enough to remind him that he didn’t need his heart when he was so forcefully connected to the world.

Loki lay there, listening to the silence in his chest for days as the palace grew around him. When the roof finally closed over his head, and the building was complete, his bones thawed. He didn’t move til his father dragged him off the floor and slapped him back to life. The dull throb in his chest sounded like ice water dripping into the silence of snowfall, and ached like nothing he’d ever felt. Had his heart frozen with his bones? It didn’t matter: it was broken anyway.

In exchange for the heat of his spirit, cultivated in the warmth of Asgard, Jötunheim rose to its former magnificence around him. The new lines of the map divided and spread like the roots of Yggdrasil; Loki wore their outline in his skin, now a ludicrous patchwork of blue and black, in place of the scars true jötnar had. He feared for the day when he no longer burned with cold as the power was torn from him and put into the earth. He’d be nothing but ice then, a pretty statue for the citadel when the world was complete.

Thor came for him, as he’d hoped and dreaded he would. He felt him before he saw him: Mjöllnir rattled his bones as it demolished the new walls of Jötunheim like so much glass. His brother had become worthy of her once again. Odin’s golden boy.

The jötnar that tried to stand before him had reached for Loki’s power, tiny pinpricks leeching thin threads of ice, but as Thor cut them down they drew more, until Loki felt like he was bleeding out through a million minute punctures in his flesh and faltered on the steps to his father’s throne, too light headed to move.

Laufey got to him before Thor did.

“Odin’s boy is here for you.”

Loki was dragged to his feet by the scruff of his furs. The flurry of muted blue shot through with red, mingled like the light of Bifrost, that whirled before Loki’s eyes eventually settled into the shape of his father.

“You will turn him away.” The ice forming on his furs cracked as Laufey released him. “Preferably before he destroys anything else I will have to rebuild.”

Loki recognised that for the threat it was, and made himself scarce. It was the only magic he afforded himself now that it cost him so dearly. As it was, he made a less than glamorous re-entry on his knees, and had to wait for the world to stop spinning before he could continue.

Thor had nearly reached the palace when Loki found him. The jötunns had had little luck in turning back the furious prince, falling and failing and wrenching more power from Loki to fuel the fiasco, so they nearly dragged him back to his knees with fatigue. He stumbled but refused to fall where his brother could see.

He made the howling storm around them settle so he could be heard.

“Thor.”

Mjöllnir nearly took his head off before his brother recognised him. It only occurred to him then that Thor had never seen him as he truly was. He felt his brother’s eyes pass over him, taking in the blue tones, the lines mapped into his skin, flinching back from the steady scarlet glow of his eyes.

The only red in Jötunheim was the light of jötunn eyes and their faint reflections in the snow, retreating as Loki advanced. Thor’s cloak was a splash of blood against the muffled grey of the landscape.

“Loki.”

Mjöllnir dropped to the snow with a thud, leaving a crater as wide as her wielder was tall. Thor dragged Loki into a hug, his joy as potent as his rage. The heat was enough that Loki felt himself beginning to thaw. It was like fever: sickening and suffocating, and terrifying as the first drops of water trailed along his fingers and dripped into the snow.

“Let go of me.” He had to wriggle free when Thor did not release him, clutching him crushingly tight as if he thought Loki would evaporate if he didn’t hold on. Out of reach of the horribly warm, horribly sweet grip, Loki felt the ice take hold of him again. It was the first time he’d been glad to feel cold.

“Brother, I’ve come to bring you home.”

Loki didn’t dare to look Thor in the face until he’d frozen all the way through. The confidence in his brother’s voice made him feel sick all over again.

“Don’t call me that.” It was half hearted at best. Not enough venom. Try again.

He slapped away the hand Thor tried to lay on his shoulder, leaving it sheathed in ice, and got to watch the triumphant smile slip from Thor’s face.

“I am not your brother. I never was.”

Thor looked wounded, but not surprised. Never surprised. Odin would have told his prize child everything. Conveniently raised the Jötunheim battery as if it were a person until the king came back to claim it. Without a fight. Why fight, when the real son of Odin is such a success, albeit he’s grounded to Midgard til he learns to behave like a man, not a child?

The heir and the spare had never been so bitterly appropriate.

_Just another stolen relic._

How long had he known? Had he returned to Asgard and happily found himself an only child and wondered why? Or had he always known? Why was he here at all if he did know?

“You are my brother, Loki.” Clearly sincerity wasn’t something Thor had lost when he curbed his temper. He was still pathetically easy to read. “Laufey may be your sire, but we are your family.”

Loki didn’t need to see his own expression to know it was an ugly thing. “Don’t presume to tell me my own mind, Thor.”

_I’m the monster parents tell their children about at night._

“Odin wouldn’t have handed you over to Laufey without a word.”

_His father didn’t move to help him. He didn’t even look surprised._

Thor had learned that enduring silence from his father: that awkward, hurtful quiet that said everything by denying nothing. The resemblance was so strong at that moment Loki could taste the contempt coiling like wet ash on his tongue. Ice spiralled down from his fingertips, the beginnings of a blade he’d yet to master the use of.

The slow drag of frost beneath his skin alerted him to a new drain on his power. Fatigue settled behind his eyes like drifts of snow, and his vision doubled so he had to endure the sight of Thor’s embarrassed silence twice over. Loki suspected his father looked out from his eyes as well, to ensure his co-operation, but he couldn’t be certain. He made sure to put on a show, just in case.

“Your silence condemns you, _brother_.”

Loki wanted to hate him, felt the cold bubbling up in him to where he could free it with his hands, make Thor burn and freeze and hurt as much as Loki did. He wanted to be saved and taken home, even if it meant he thawed in the heat of Asgard and melted away to nothing. He didn’t know which hope was stronger.

(Desperately, hopelessly, he wanted Odin to be the one to call the Bifrost down as he had when he came to retrieve them- Thor- the first time.)

“Loki...” Mjöllnir twitched where she lay in the snow. Thor’s certainty was wavering. Loki’s nascent wishes died like flames in the Jötunheim wind.

“Go back to Asgard, Odinsson,” he spat with all the venom he could muster. “You’re not welcome here.”

When Thor was gone, Loki sat in the snow where the Bifrost had struck. There seemed little point in moving.

+

With Thor gone, the task of rebuilding began again.

Loki didn’t remember most of it. He was forced open to his widest extent, and the power spilled out in waves like arterial surge. The weakness was immediate; the dissociation took a moment longer. Leaving his body kneeling in the snow, stiff and cold and silent, his weary spirit seeped into the ground with his strength and rose again in the new walls of the city.

It was quiet there, but not peaceful. Need was a constant buzz around him, scraping away the edges of his mind for more power. Loki felt lighter for it but struggled to maintain any real sense of consciousness as his self was fragmented and siphoned off to fuel the growth of Jötunheim. Vaguely, he wondered what had happened to his body, if his mind was in such disrepair, but the concern slipped from his insubstantial grasp and he didn’t care enough to reach for it again.

+

Hel wasn’t surprised when the peace ended. Asgard was too complacent; Jötunheim too bitter. She prepared places for those who would be joining her, escorted by dead guardsmen. Shades of mothers and grandmothers offered to manage the nurseries. Hel had little patience for the tiny spirits that could barely hold themselves together.

A host of jötnar were first to appear, but their spirits evaporated on the plains of Niflheim. Those who died in combat did not belong in her halls. Standard procedure. What wasn’t was the power surge they heralded.

Jötunheim must have retrieved the casket.

The ice in Niflheim fairly sang with power as Jötunheim’s increased. Some days Hel thought she could hear a voice in it, a vague and desperate murmur that sounded more and more like the inhabitants of her halls with every new day she heard it. It was very familiar, but Hel wasn’t one for jumping to dramatic conclusions.

As the ice on Jötunheim grew, Niflheim mimicked it: the jagged, fruitless results littered the snowy landscape like the corpses of burnt out buildings, the mists of the lower world ghosting round the serrated peaks. Hel took her time to explore these new spectres, feeling her father’s touch in them. The largest could have been the skeleton of a castle, and continued to swell over the course of two weeks.

When Hel walked beneath those grand bones as they grew, she left two sets of footprints in the snow. For thirteen days she was escorted by footprints and a heartbeat that echoed off the walls. On the fourteenth she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the ice, and saw a man through her dead eye. He smiled-a fixed corpse grin, all teeth- at her as the ribs of the ceiling closed over their heads, and vanished. Hel waited to see if he would reappear, but she was alone again in the mirrored ice.

She didn’t return to her halls that night. Her path led her to the very edge of Niflheim.

“Heimdall.”

+

Time was a difficult thing to judge in that state. At some stage, even his hazy sense of himself faded, and the time passed like dead sleep without dreams. The next thing he knew was waking in the snow, trying to remember how to breathe and wondering if he’d always felt this empty. His sight cleared as the ice cleared from his face.

His father was leaning over him.

“You shouldn’t let go so easily.” The ice holding Loki in place retreated at Laufey’s touch. He tried to stand, but couldn’t even muster the energy to sit up. “Or you’ll wake up in the Niflheim snow.”

Laufey lifted him with as much difficulty as a child lifting a cloth doll, but did not try to set Loki on his feet. He would have fallen if Laufey had, he knew that, but however expedient it was, being carried by his father unnerved him.

He could hear Laufey breathing from this position, a sound like ice shearing off a glacier. No matter how weak Loki was, it was a ridiculously vulnerable position for Laufey to put himself in. The jötunn king’s heartbeat was thunder in his ears. It would have been so easy to silence.

Laufey knew it too. “I am not a fool, Loki. You have that of me.”

His father did not explain further, nor did Loki ask.

Loki didn’t remember the rest of the journey over the ice. He woke in the citadel, the light of the casket washing the walls with soft blue shadows. In the distance, he could feel walls being raised out of the debris left by Thor: a constant drag of energy that thrummed in his bones and fatigued him before he’d even woken properly.

He felt... looser in his skin. There were gaps in his mind where he knew he’d filled the space before. It wasn’t a feeling he’d ever encountered before, but it made him feel ill as he tentatively explored it. Ragged edges, blurred memories that had been clear.

The gentle quiet of the palace at night; the scent of his mother’s perfume and the soft touch of her hand; the fierce joy of fighting at Thor’s side, tempered by frustration.

Love and fear, equally fervent in ~~his father’s~~ in Odin’s presence.

He knew he’d experienced those things, but he couldn’t call the real feelings or sounds or smells to mind. He could still find those memories, but he viewed them through glass.

It was terrifying.

+

Loki was stripped black with frostbite by the time the damage wrought by Thor had been undone. The pain was reassuring when it was only in his flesh.

Laufey only noticed when it spread across Loki’s face as the growth of Jötunheim crept onward. His disgust was something new to Loki.

“You are not a son of the AllFather; you are not a fool.” He caught Loki by the chin and inspected his burns with a disappointed eye. Loki squirmed under the scrutiny.

“The cold doesn’t burn the jötnar. This-” the trailing touch over his frostbitten skin was almost gentle, except for the scratch of sharp nails- “is something you do to yourself.”

It was only a revelation to Laufey.

+

Hel did not waste time: she despised being away from her realm any longer than necessary. Loki was not in Asgard, and Heimdall would not tell her where Thor was. It didn’t matter. The news would spread quickly enough.

She went straight to Odin. He was waiting for her.

“You are far from home, Helreginn.”

“So is my father, Valföðr.”

Odin did not reply.

“You knew this already.” Hel was not surprised. “Did you know the ice in Niflheim is growing? My father walked beneath it with me.”

She saw the flicker in his living eye with both of hers. Pain was something that did not change between life and death. It was fascinating.

A thunderfall of footsteps rushed down the long corridor towards the throne room. Hel raised her voice above them.

“What will you do, Valföðr?” She paused to let the doors crash open behind her. Odin’s expression was inscrutable, even to her. “Winter is approaching. My father will come to me.”

Far be it from her to tell the Hanged One what he already knew, but she wanted to see his pain again. She hadn’t realised Odin was capable of it: it mesmerised her.

“Or will you do nothing?”

Hel found the answer she needed in silence. She turned her back on Odin and crossed the floor to the door, ducking under Thor’s arm to exit.

“I will welcome my father in my halls then.”

Outside, the thunderclouds were gathering, just as planned.

+

Jötunheim returned to its prime, with Laufey’s city glittering at the centre: Glæsisvellir they called it, after a city that had existed before the war. Now the old plains were a graveyard, as deathly still as Niflheim, but its successor had captured its beauty. It had to, with all Loki had given to make it so. He saw more of himself in the landscape than in the mirror now.

That realisation made him laugh. For days.

+

Loki didn’t burn anymore. Aside from a few scars, the deepest lines scoring out the shape of the palace and citadel, he was all blue again. He painted himself that way: the black underneath it was ugly. Power flowed free as blood now, washing away fragments of himself each time.

The shapes rising from the snow grew stranger with time. Twisted, raw forms, with every pane of ice reduced to a web of splinters: the reflections they threw off never matched what looked in. Some, formed so thin they looked like glass, were tinted red so the shadows they cast looked like bloodstains on the snow. Loki found them amusing: it was the only reason they existed.

Laufey had to coax him back now, with a harsh word or a harsher hand. Loki wandered free of himself too easily and returned with reluctance.

+

Hel feared she had miscalculated when she saw her father on the plains of Niflheim.

+

Laufey knew the moment Odin’s son set foot on Jötunheim again. He watched clouds weight down the sky, dark and ponderous, growling with the first hints of a storm.

The Bifrost strike could have been lightning, blasting through the towers of ice and rock to hit ground just within sight. Also within range of a hammer throw: Laufey would have to be careful.

He didn’t step out of the shadow of Glæsisvellir until Thor was within his own reach. The son of Odin trod with care this time, but still far too loud, far too conspicuous. Subtlety wasn’t something that had bred true in Odin’s line. Perhaps treachery would be the same.

“If I recall, Odinsson, you were told to return to Asgard.”

Laufey had already brought his bladed arm to bear for the expected strike from Mjöllnir. Predictable. The ice cracked under the strain but held. Lightning snapped overhead.

 “I’m here for my brother.”

Laufey smirked at him. “I gathered that.” A second blow from Mjöllnir swept past, intended for his head. He deflected it into the wall behind him. Thor called the hammer back to him, collapsing the shattered structure around the jötnar king. The rubble evaporated without touching Laufey.

“Your toy may be well crafted, Odinsson, but it is still a toy. Ymir is the author of the ice in my blood.” He tapped the frozen edge of his blade against Mjöllnir’s head. “It will take more than this to break me.”

“Care to test that theory?” Thor growled, knocking Laufey’s blade away with a twitch of the hammer. Lightning forked across the sky like a flicker of Níðhöggr’s tongue.

“If the AllFather could not bring me down, even during the warmest day in Jötunheim, what arrogance makes you think you can?” Laufey cut Thor off before he could respond. “It is arrogance, be assured.”

Above them, the clouds finally opened and the rain began. It was hail before it hit the ground.

“If you stand between me and my brother, I will cut you down,” Thor promised him, “and that is not arrogance: it’s necessity.” He stepped forward, brandishing Mjöllnir, and didn’t flinch when the proximity revealed Laufey to be nearly three times his size. The king was almost impressed. Almost.

“You will not keep Loki from me,” Thor growled, backed by mimicking thunder.

Laufey was not moved. In fact, he looked rather bored.

“I don’t recall saying I would.” That stopped the Asgardian prince dead. Laufey lifted his arm so Thor could see the blade of ice melt away. “Have him, if it means that much.”

“You should take him while there’s still something left to take.”

The crash of lightning overhead warned of Thor’s anger, but Laufey was not moved. For all his strength and flashy mood swings, he was barely more than a child. Like Laufey’s son.

“You would give up so easily?”

Laufey looked askance at Thor’s suspicion.

“What good is he to me, with his power so spent he brings down what he tries to build?” What good to the son of Odin, when Loki looked at Laufey and called him father without sarcasm, because he didn’t remember he had another?

“I don’t keep broken tools.”

He ducked away with a predator’s grin for the furious Asgardian, and melted into the ice before Mjöllnir could touch him.

+

Thor’s second trip through Glæsisvellir was a quieter one.

Jötunheim’s ruins had become a kingdom, the capital a labyrinth of spires sharp enough to cut. It stabilised as Thor moved towards the centre, but the clean lines of the central buildings felt old, isolated from the encroaching madness of the mess around them. The city was most vicious on its outer edges, where new shapes littered the snow, abandoned half formed, warped peaks that reached in agony for the clear emptiness of the sky. Further in, twists of tinted ice threw bloody reflections on their neighbours.

The city was deserted. No, not deserted: Thor was very aware of the red eyes always on his back but he didn’t so much as catch a glimpse of a single jötunn. It frustrated him til lightning struck one of the highest points as he passed it, and a final blow from Mjöllnir reduced the entire building to rubble, blocking the path back.

All roads led to the centre: the citadel. After the third time he turned a complete circle, Thor realised he was being led. Mjöllnir grew lighter in his grip, aching to retaliate. He held her still, for now, letting the road guide him until it opened out into a courtyard where the jötnar citadel stood alone.

Loki stood in the doorway. Or he did, until Thor, brought up short in surprise, bolted forward to catch up to him. The image melted away with a grin and a sharp gesture at the staircase.

The real thing was waiting for him at the top, seated at the base of the altar. Loki had a lap full of broken glass and metal that he ran his fingers through over and over, until Thor stepped into the room. He stood abruptly, scattering the mess.

His brother looked awful.

Loki’s eyes flipped between green and red, but always blank, looking at a point beyond him. Blue swirled across his skin, chased by the pink/white the Asgardians wore- a brief break in the wash showed blistered black under it all- and then again by blue. He was a constant mess of colour, like he couldn’t remember which belonged to him anymore.

“Loki...”

A smile splintered across his brother’s face. Those flickering eyes settled on Thor’s face- but still vacant, so vacant- and turned blue, mimicking him; mocking him?

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Thor didn’t dare take his eyes off Loki’s jagged grin to look around him. His brother stared right back at him but couldn’t hold his gaze, breaking into giggles.

“Glæsisvellir: my father’s city.” He gestured at the windows, where the razor edges of the city could just be seen. “I say my father’s. It’s really mine.” He tried to smother his giggles, but they leaked out between his blue-pink-black-blue fingers. “He used the power, but it’s really me. I’m in all of it. Can you see?”

Loki turned to gaze out of the window, a thousand faces looking back in the facets of the wall. Outside, a new tower struggled to raise itself out of the ground, already crippled as one side gave way under the strain and collapsed. A smear of black blistered across Loki’s face, but it disappeared behind the next wash of blue-pink-blue.

Cautiously, Thor moved to stand beside his brother, broken glass crunching under his boots. Loki leaned forward over the sill, that ecstatic grin still sprawling over his face and lit up, sharp and sick, by the dim light of Glæsisvellir. The blue bled out of his glassy eyes when his concentration wandered, leaving them in the muddiness between green and red.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Thor looked out over the jagged terrain and wished he had Loki’s ability to lie. Glæsisvellir was nothing short of horrifying with the fragile wraith his brother had become looking over it with such pride, such _love_. He’d seen that look before, when Fenrir, a pup already five feet at the shoulder, barked his first word; when Sleipnir overlooked Odin in favour of his mother; when Loki’s tiny stillborn returned to her father a grown woman and mistress of nine realms.

It should never have applied to Laufey’s city.

“It looks painful.”

Loki’s grin shattered into giggles, high pitched and patently false. “Idiot. Birth is painful. You have to give to create anything.” The broken tower beyond the window made another vain attempt to rise. When it crumpled for the second time, it was only Loki’s grip on the sill that stopped him from doing the same. White joined the flow of colours on Loki’s skin.

Thor couldn’t just watch anymore. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s narrow shoulders, regardless of the frost seeping through his mail, and was grateful when Loki didn’t immediately shrug him off. That close, he could feel his brother trembling: it broke his heart.

“You shouldn’t have to give everything.”

Loki said nothing, but leaned against Thor who willingly took his weight (so much less than he remembered). He was cold, cold enough to sting the bare hand Thor rested on his arm, and yet there was a sheen of sweat on his changing skin. Illness, of course it was: a jötunn- and it hurt to think of Loki like that, it honestly did- could burn with fever and still freeze an Asgardian black. Loki needed a healer.

“I’m taking you home, brother. You aren’t well.”

It was the wrong move. Thor’s entire left arm froze before he had the good sense to let go.

“I am home, Asgardian,” Loki hissed at him, his chameleon colour change finally settling on blue, “and no brother to you.”

+

The image of Loki in Niflheim’s snow was growing clearer: Hel could see him with both eyes.

She walked out to meet him and remembered not to flinch when neither of her hands passed through his form.

“You can’t be here. It isn’t time.”

Loki moved around his daughter without seeing her and stepped out of the snow, into the shelter cast by the roof of Gjallarbrú. The bridge’s glow reflected gold in Loki’s empty eyes.

Ten steps from the doors to her halls. Beyond the immutable gates, Garmr whined and raised his voice in a thin howl that echoed off the walls of the mountain and the bristling shapes coiling in the snow until the whole plain wailed with the first sign of the end.

Ragnarök.

+

Thor should have expected Loki would run. He reacted instinctively to his brother turning away from him and caught hold of Loki’s arm just as the spell took hold. It was only surprise and Loki’s reduced reaction time that let Thor hitch a ride on his spell. Normally Loki would dump him out, half way if he was feeling particularly malicious.

They crashed into the snow a second later, a sprawling mess of a landing. Loki rolled to a stop a few yards ahead of Thor and struggled to get back to his feet, knees buckling on his first abortive tries. Thor scrambled up, called Mjöllnir from where she’d fallen some way back and cautiously approached Loki.

A wall of ice went up between them. He tapped Mjöllnir against it and watched it shake. Laughably weak, but Thor wasn’t amused. The wall shivered itself to pieces without his help. Loki, on his feet by force of will alone, tried to step back and couldn’t muster the strength. It sickened Thor to see his brother so reduced.

Mist hung low over the snow, curling around their feet. It felt wrong, like when Huginn and Munnin looked at him with intelligent eyes. Thor worried, despite blows and words exchanged, that Laufey watched their exchange and sought to intervene. He had to get Loki to safety fast.

A form began to coalesce in the mist. Thor reacted immediately, Mjöllnir humming with power as he threw her, surging towards the intruder.

Hel turned her black shoulder to his blow, and Mjöllnir’s gleaming head passed straight through her. She shuddered and faded, struggling to reassert her physical form.

“Hulda?”

The name was unfamiliar to Thor, but the hope in Loki’s voice broke his heart a little. Hel smiled the way grieving parents did when their child’s name was mentioned and hugged Loki close. She was only just shorter than him now.

“Yes, father. I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Loki murmured, yet he clung fiercely to his nebulous daughter. It was only the second time in his life he had seen her outside of Niflheim. “It isn’t time.”

“No, it isn’t, but things have changed.” She stroked his hair and down his back, clumsy with lack of practise. Loki’s rapid fluctuations of form receded under her hands, until he finally settled into patchwork blue black, the dim glow of his eyes casting red shadows on his daughter’s white hand.

“You know I will always come for you. If you want to come with me, I will welcome you: I will let Fenrir free myself and Jörmungandr will rise from the depths.” Thor flinched and Hel saw it: her expression sat somewhere between grief and glee.

“If you want me to, I will take you with me and we can watch the heat of Múspellheim devour the World Tree.” Her fervency was lunatic, and for a moment Thor truly feared he would watch the world end from the snow of Jötunheim. Loki looked at him over Hel’s black shoulder, the vivid madness replaced by something soft and silent and desperately wanting. Thor could not turn away.

“Take me home.”

Hel’s corpse grin widened. Loki went limp in her arms.

“Loki!”

“Father is coming with me,” Hel retorted, hands curling like claws into the worn fabric of Loki’s robes. “You had your chance.”

“I won’t let you do this,” Thor snarled at Hel. He brought Mjöllnir to bear without a second thought, cleaving through Hel’s head with one blow. She dissipated into mist, as he knew she would; he knelt to lift his brother from where he’d collapsed in the snow.

“I won’t let you go, brother. I promise.” He clutched Loki to him, Mjöllnir humming eagerly as she leapt back to his hand. Hel reformed just out of reach, the distant shape of Glæsisvellir just visible through her translucent form.

“You did the first time, Eindriði.” Thor flinched and felt Loki tense, stirring.

“I would never have left if I knew what was really happening.”

“You would never have returned if I hadn’t brought you!” Hel hissed at him, freezing mist curling around her feet. “Content to play at hero on Midgard without a thought! You are no different to Glapsviðr, who remembers his family only when he needs pawns for his board.”

“I didn’t know.” But Odin had; of course he had, and Thor hadn’t seen it til now. The thought made him sick.

“Ignorance is not an excuse!”

“I made a mistake,” Thor replied, and Hel looked honestly surprised at his admission, “and I cannot take it back. All I can do is make amends.” He felt Loki tremble and tightened his grip on his brother, as much to comfort himself as Loki.

“Too late,” she sneered. “Far too late.”

“It is never too late,” he snarled, “not while we’re still alive. I will not let you concede defeat before the end.”

“I’m trying to save my father from all of you manipulative fools!”

“You’re trying to incite Ragnarok!” Thor roared. “I may be no better than Laufey, hurting my brother as I have-” It hurt to say that, no matter how true it was, “but you’re doing this, knowing it will hurt him... you’re no better than my father.”

That stopped her in her tracks. Her outrage was clear on her face, but she didn’t argue against his accusation, and that was infinitely more telling.

“No better than the Allfather.” She spat the title with distaste and a seething smile. “You’re brighter than I gave you credit for.”

Hel advanced, threat in every line of her translucent form. Thor levelled Mjöllnir at her: it wasn’t an idle threat.

“What will you do if I don’t concede? Are you going to try to kill me?”

“I don’t intend to try,” he promised her.

Hel grinned, triumphant. “Good.”

The change was so abrupt it actually took Thor a few seconds to process what she said.

She ghosted forward, so fast he hadn’t realised she’d moved until she was already bent over Loki.

“You left part of yourself in Niflheim,” Hel whispered for Loki’s ears only. “I’m returning it.” She scarcely brushed her fingertips over his face but he gripped Thor tight by the shoulders and shuddered as if with the onset of seizure.

When he finally raised his head again, his face was touched pink under Hel’s warm white hand. The eyes that caught Thor’s again were green, and clear as they hadn’t been since before all this had started. Thor could not help a smile, so strong was his relief, and brushed a hasty hand over his own eyes.

“Welcome back, father,” Hel whispered and was selfish enough to hug Loki tight for a moment. Loki allowed it though Thor hovered anxiously.

I will see you when it’s time.” Unable to maintain her form any longer, Hel dissipated into mist, curling between Loki’s fingers and vanishing into the cold air. Loki crumpled without her support; Thor was waiting to catch him.

“Take me home.”

+

Night had fallen by the time they returned to the palace. Sleipnir, waiting for them on the Bifrost when Heimdall brought them back, carried them to the steps before he let Thor dismount.

Odin waited for them at the top.

Thor shifted Loki’s sleeping form, unconsciously holding him tighter as he passed his father.

“Thor.”

He didn’t stop. “We will talk about this later. I have bigger priorities now.”

Odin didn’t follow. Thor shouldn’t have expected that he would.

+  
  
Glossary O'Doom:

Helreginn- ruler of Hel (not actually a kenning for Hel, but it worked for what I needed it for)

Valföðr- Father of the Slain (a vague reference to Odin's lordship of Valhalla)

Glæsisvellir- Glittering Plains (a completely unrelated place in Jötunheim that I nicked)

Gjallarbrú- the final bridge you have to cross to reach the halls of Hel. Supposedly thatched with gold.

Garmr- Essentially the Norse version of Cerberus. His howling heralds the onset of Ragnarök.

Huginn and Munnin- Odin's ravens.

Hulda- What Loki named Hel when she was first born (in my headcanon, feel free to ignore). It means "hidden" which is incidentally what "Hel" means according to certain translations.

Fenrir and Jörmungandr- Loki's other kids: Hel's little brothers. A ten foot wolf cub and a two mile serpent respectively.

Múspellheim- Land of the fire giants

Eindriði- a name for Thor, meaning "the one who rides alone". It's a dig at his having left the first time without Loki.

Glapsviðr- a name for Odin, meaning "Swift in Deceit". Hel's personal opinion on Odin.


End file.
